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One Cheerful Yuletide Tradition You Need to Be Very Careful Of
Or “Yule be sorry”
The Tradition of the Johnson Yule Log
Daddy was a self-proclaimed “River Rat.” Having grown-up on the banks of the Ohio, he fished, swam, and played in it his entire life. One of his favorite pastimes, well through his seventies, was walking along the banks, picking up driftwood, and finding firewood that he would haul home in the trunk of his car. He was proud of collecting “free” fuel and would gleefully throw it in the fireplace through the cold winter months.
Each year, Daddy would make it his goal to find the biggest, driest, hardest piece of wood he could find on the riverbanks to use on Christmas Eve. It was a Johnson tradition that once the Yule log was put on the fire, it had to burn throughout the night and still be glowing Christmas morning when the second-to-largest log would be thrown on.
“The Stockings Were Hung By the Chimney With Care…”
The Christmas of 1970, when I was twelve, Mother had been cooking all day for company. My grandparents, Maw-Maw, and Nanny and Baw-Baw were coming for Christmas Eve dinner. Mother had moved the maple, drop-leaf table out into the living room so we’d have room for more people than could fit in the…
